UPDATED 9/19, 9:05 p.m. ET: The Associated Press reports that Mystikal pleaded not guilty on Monday to numerous charges including first-degree rape, which would come with an automatic life sentence. Other charges include false imprisonment, domestic abuse battery by strangulation, simple robbery, and possession of heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine, and Xanax.
“My client doesn’t even do drugs, so he has absolutely no idea what they were talking about,” Mystikal’s attorney Joel Pearce told the AP.
Pearce said the rapper’s bond “may be discussed” during a hearing on Oct. 17, but prosecutors have already indicated their plan to bring up Mystikal’s guilty plea on sexual battery and extortion charges in 2003. He was sentenced to six years in prison in that instance, and required to register as a sex offender in Louisiana following his release.
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Mystikal, whose real name is Michael Lawrence Tyler, is facing the potential of life in prison following his first-degree rape and domestic abuse indictment.
Per the New Orleans Advocate, Mystikal has been indicted on a series of charges over an alleged assault of a woman that took place at his home in Prairieville, Louisiana. If convicted on the first-degree rape charge, he is facing a mandatory life sentence. The charge was filed against Mystikal on Tuesday alongside nine other criminal counts. He was arrested in July by deputies from the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office, and is being held at Ascension Parish prison without bail.
The other charges include simple criminal damage to property, false imprisonment, domestic abuse battery by strangulation, simple robbery, possession of heroin, illegal possession of Xanax, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, and possession of methamphetamine. The drug charges were leveled against the rapper on account of an allegation from the alleged victim, who said that she saw a white crystalline-like substance in his home. Narcotics were also recovered by the officers at his home.
“It’s an indictment,” said his attorney Joel Pearce on Wednesday. “It means nothing. We look forward to our day in court.”
Mystikal was denied bond last month during a hearing, which prompted the 51-year-old to fire his attorney in favor of an attorney he worked with during his sexual assault case in 2017. He spent approximately 18 months in jail in connection with that separate charge, but the charges were dismissed by a grand jury.
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